This is the second post in a three-part series by Southern New Hampshire University’s Assistant Vice President of Career Services, Eric Hall.
At Southern New Hampshire University, we’ve found that approaching employer outreach in the same way we do our students—proactively—has yielded higher levels of engagement and partnership. In supporting a diverse global population of learners, it is imperative that we not operate under the expectation that employers will come to us.
Our Employer Relations team is aligned regionally in an effort to create a comprehensive national outreach plan. With all parties—students, career centers, and employers—working from home, there’s an increasing need to tap into organizations with a global footprint and industries with significant hiring needs, rather than focus on the more typical local opportunities that accommodate a traditional, residential experience.
Compassion for Employers, too
In our communications with employers, we seek to understand and speak to their needs. As our recruiting colleagues struggle with the same concerns that we and our students share, we have found that serving as a source of compassion makes an indelible impact.
While hiring plans have no doubt been affected by the global pandemic, opportunity still abounds; armed with employer insights, we can play a pivotal role in helping to connect organizations with the dynamic candidates they crave, alleviating some of the burden they, too, face during these stressful and challenging times.
Advocate
This crisis has provided our team with an opportunity to serve as a resource for our employer partners and as an advocate for our learners. With our students scattered across the country, our team has looked to provide guidance around best practices and strategies for hosting remote internships and projects.
As organizations find themselves now tasked with jumping headfirst into the virtual experiential learning deep end, we can help to create meaningful, transformative experiences for students and employers alike. We can speak to the unique characteristics of our populations, championing the skills they’ve developed over the course of their collegiate tenure that differentiates them from their peers.
SNHU’s President, Paul LeBlanc, recently asked in Forbes, “whether or not employers will revert back to the college degree as a requirement for non-degree work, repeating the patterns of 2008-2012. If they do, the reforms for which higher education is ripe will be set back another ten years.”
It certainly feels as though the world of work will be seismically altered and, as we emerge from this, unexpected positions will be created and new and different skills will be needed. Through our discussions with colleagues from industry we can ensure we are providing students the educational pathways and relevant competencies needed to succeed and flourish.
Read part one of our series, “Strategies for Remote Student Career Engagement”.
Coming soon, part three of our series.